Thursday, February 14, 2008

Consider the rise and fall of one the denomination’s most promising stars.

“Paul had warned those Ephesian elders about an invasion of false teachers. He said, ‘Watch out now, because fierce wolves shall come, not sparing the flock.’ Well, those wolves had come. And deceptive teachers had slithered into the sheepfold.” These were the words of Darrell Gilyard, a young, handsome black pastor, as he stood before the Thomas Road Baptist Church—a mega-church founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell.

In 1989, the vision of this pastor with creamy cocoa skin, decked out in an immaculate steel-gray suit, streamed through the airways on the nationally syndicated broadcast of Falwell’s Old-Time Gospel Hour. As the cameraman cuts to the audience, grown men blink furiously as Gilyard’s voice rises and falls into a soft, gravely tone and moves them to tears.The man had an undeniable star quality. Gilyard’s mentor, former SBC president Paige Patterson, dubbed him one of the “most brilliant men in the pulpit.” It was that natural charisma and talent that led SBC leaders like Patterson and Jerry Vines, another SBC president, to promote Gilyard.

But when Gilyard stood at the pulpit at Falwell’s church that day in 1989, he already had a dark history with parishioners. A 1991 Dallas Morning News story exposed many of the alleged indiscretions that marked Gilyard’s early career. According to the article, Gilyard had been forced out of a Dallas Baptist church in 1987 amid accusations of sexual impropriety. Yet Gilyard would still have a four-year run as pastor of Victory Baptist Church, another Dallas church.The same news article included the accounts of several women who said Gilyard sexually abused them—in their homes, the church, even at the base of the pulpit—and they came to Patterson with the allegations. But they say Patterson refused to help them, at times refusing their phone calls or telling them that unless they had proof, he would not see them. Some women said he asked them to refrain from talking about the abuse. In press accounts at the time, Patterson said he was “dealing with a man of special gifts and talents” and that he was “unwilling to call anyone guilty until I had demonstrable evidence that these allegations were true.”That “demonstrable evidence” wouldn’t come until 1991, when, as the Dallas news account detailed, Gilyard admitted to Patterson that he had committed adultery—even though many of the women’s allegations seemed much more akin to rape than consensual sex. It was then that Patterson finally cut ties with his protégé—but not before he personally prepared the goodbye speech for Gilyard to deliver to Victory Baptist.Still, there were other congregations waiting for Gilyard.

Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Florida was once a flock without a shepherd—at least, that’s how they describe themselves. But that changed. “God sent a young man to preach for us...a young man from Dallas, Texas, of national prominence,” the church history reads as it describes Gilyard.Little did they know that the man who would become their pastor in April 1993, a man who the congregation dubbed their “Moses,” had a trail of victims that snaked westward all the way back to Texas. The people packing the pews at Shiloh—a congregation that impressively grew to more than 7,000 members under 14 years of Gilyard’s leadership—must have fallen hard for him.His tale of trial and tribulation, a touching story of redemption, was always a crowd pleaser: It was the struggle of a black orphan who grew up on the streets and even lived under a Florida bridge during his teen years. The story was so powerful, in fact, that Falwell peddled The Darrell Gilyard Story, a biographical video that chronicled Gilyard’s rise to fame after a hard-knock life, on his television show.

Too bad it was a lie. Gilyard’s tale of woe unraveled when a Florida woman came forward and said that she raised Gilyard from early childhood to adulthood. Despite reports that their pastor had lied about his past, Gilyard’s parishioners remained steadfast in their devotion.Even after Gilyard was arrested on Jan. 14 after a woman told the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office that Gilyard sent obscene, sexually explicit text messages to her 14-year-old daughter, the Shiloh website still boasted, “God is doing great works through Pastor Gilyard.... So let us rejoice and thank God for sending us a ‘Moses’ to lead us to higher heights!” Gilyard resigned Jan. 4—10 days before his arrest—and pleaded not guilty to lewd and lascivious conduct.The Patterson-Gilyard connection is hard for SNAP members to stomach. As is Gilyard’s connection with Vines, who mentored Gilyard as a young seminary student. When the two crossed paths again three or four years ago, Gilyard asked Vines for forgiveness for his past troubles. Vines not only forgave Gilyard, but SNAP says he also lent credibility to the man by preaching at Gilyard’s church.“What’s unbelievable is that [Patterson and Vines] don’t see how morally reprehensible this is,” Brown says. “They’re blind to it—they’re blind to their own complicity in this horror. And to the contrary, I think they honestly believe that they are doing good and doing the right thing, which was probably true of Catholic bishops as well.”

In January, SNAP sent a letter to trustees at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, where Patterson now serves as president, asking them to temporarily remove Patterson from his position to investigate claims that he failed to warn churches that Gilyard was a serial predator. “I think you’ve got to wonder—this happened 17 years ago—why have there not been other Southern Baptist leaders and ministers to call Patterson out for this?” Brown says. “Why does it take a young mother there in Jacksonville, Fla., who finally speaks out about Gilyard [to expose him]? Why were there not other leaders in this huge denomination who called him on the carpet for this?”Patterson has characterized SNAP’s claim as “misinformed and inaccurate.” He claims that he’s fought to bring more awareness to clergy sex abuse—what he calls one of the greatest tragedies of the modern era. “Throughout my 50 years in the ministry…I have never turned a blind-eye to clergy sex abuse...and in the classroom and in the pulpit I have steadfastly fought and will continue to warn and fight against it,” Patterson said in a press release following SNAP’s call for an investigation.But it seems that Patterson never extended those “steadfast” warnings against sex abuse to the string of churches where Gilyard took the pulpit. And as much as Patterson had helped Gilyard, he certainly didn’t expend as much energy—if any—dimming Gilyard’s rising star.In a press statement, Patterson now says he exercises “no control over autonomous churches anywhere” and that he has “no influence [on churches] not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Religious leaders the Scene interviewed say that even if pastors don’t feel they have a professional obligation to warn churches of sex abuse allegations against a new pastor, as men of God and as human beings they have the moral obligation to protect people in the pews.Burleson says denominational distinctions shouldn’t make any difference when it comes to protecting people from known sexual predators. “If [Gilyard] went to a Christian church, if he went to a Methodist church...we would inform that church regardless of the denomination.”Burleson describes Gilyard’s decades-long run of abuse as a shameful indictment on the church and says that the ease with which predators are able to bounce from pulpit to pulpit is a big part of why he’s involved in lobbying the SBC for change. But he knows it won’t be easy.

Monday, February 11, 2008

A Beautiful story that helps us understand that things do happen for a reason. Please read the entire story, you will be amazed at the ending. God's hand is in everything, even when it takes years to see the results and even when the circumstances and waiting do not make sense.

The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn , arrived in early October excited about their opportunities. When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve. They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc, and on December 18 were ahead of schedule and just about finished. On December 19 a terrible tempest - a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days. On the 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high. The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, he headed home.

On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a Cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church. By this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus.. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later. She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc., to put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry.

The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and that it covered up the entire problem area. Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was like a sheet.. "Pastor," she asked, "where did you get that tablecloth?" The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were crocheted into it there. They were. These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria. The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told how he had just gotten the Tablecloth. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria . When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. He was captured, sent to prison and she never saw her husband or her home again. The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home, that was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.

What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return. One older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood continued to sit in one of the pews and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn't leaving. The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike. He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison.. He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years in between. The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride.

They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier. He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman's apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.

True Story - submitted by Pastor Rob Reid and passed along to me by friends.

Who says God does not work in mysterious ways. His love is always with us, His promises are true, and when we give Him all our cares, He will see us through. So when the road you're traveling on seems difficult at best. Just remember God has a plan, even when we can't see His hand at work. When there is nothing left but God, that is when you find out that God is all you need.

Scripture

Psalm 17:8-13 says, "Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked who assail me, from my mortal enemies who surround me. They close up their callous hearts, and their mouths speak with arrogance. (vs.13) Rise up oh Lord, confront them, bring them down; rescue me from the wicked with your sword."